


prelude

by AdiAbieu



Series: anthology [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 03:02:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16673476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdiAbieu/pseuds/AdiAbieu
Summary: Time is a powerful thing. It can alter the context of conversations, of interactions, of entire friendships.





	prelude

**Author's Note:**

> Set mid-2x05.

Credits crawl up the screen, the crooning woodwind of Shostakovich’s  _ Jazz Suite No.2  _ filtering out through the speakers. No matter how many times she hears it, that opening melody always sends tingles down her spine.

Alex throws her arms up, stretching out tight shoulders. “I know I say this every time we watch it, but I love this movie.”

At an unamused sniff,  _ Eyes Wide Shut _ is clicked off and the orchestra cuts away into silence. They begin to clear away the bombshell left by their weekly get together. Alex turns her nose up at the amount of grease on the bottom of the empty pizza box. 

After a long delay, Kara says, “I like it too, even if it is a little weird.” She spies a few stray M&Ms that had rolled from the torn packet. “But you love all of his films, right? The director?” she adds and pops the colourful candy into her mouth. 

Alex raises an eyebrow at the pointed tone. “Really? All these years and you’re still mad about the Shining?”

Kara pulls on her coat, and then lifts her chin in faux-contemplation. “I was never the same after watching Jack Nicholson hack through a bathroom door.”

Rolling her eyes, Alex sees her out. She holds the curtain back, waving Kara off. “See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, night!” Kara calls back, flying off into the night sky. 

Brushing her teeth and scratching at an old scar along her flank, Alex mulls over the odd feeling in her gut that occurs every time she watches a film from Kubrick’s repertoire. It’s as if she’s aware that she’s missed something along the way, that the events just aren’t working out as they appear to be. 

Spitting into the sink and rinsing out her mouth, she lingers. There is a brightness in her eyes that, admittedly, she hasn’t seen in a while. Even J’onn commented that she had a spring in her step. Her reflection frowns at her. They hadn’t even succeeded in putting Roulette behind bars, and yet, Alex still felt on some basic level that the mission was a success. 

Perhaps, she thinks, it was having a new partner that brought fresh ideas and a thirst for adrenaline into her daily life. Maggie inspired her in a way that she had been lagging before. She feels rejuvenated, the cobwebs of disillusionment swept away. 

And if she were honest with herself, the masquerade element of the fight club had imprinted upon her. Her movie choice for Sister Night -  _ Eyes Wide Shut -  _ wasn’t a coincidence after all, just her subconscious still working over details of the case. 

With a snort, she wipes her mouth and switches off the bathroom light. 

~

Occasionally, Alex dreams.

Mostly in two instances. Either she has the loopy visions associated with pain medication, or she has nightmares. Other than that, she rarely dreams. 

She manifests in a corridor. Two hip-high statues of lions face her, guarding a closed maghony door. From entries and annexies on either side, suits and dresses float like figures through smoke around her, taking no heed. She searches their eyes, trying to penetrate the expressionless masquerade covers they wear, but to no avail. Trailing her gaze down some of the figures, she realises that the fine cuts of the suits are adjusted. 

Around her, the corridor is filled with women, not a man in sight. 

Something draws her forward, and she moves towards the closed door as if through glue, the passerbys effortlessly dodging around her. Reaching the two statues, she wonders how the sculptor had cut the hunger so realistically into their features, bringing their stone eyes to life. 

She opens the maghony door, and finds a room of flesh. Dozens of women kiss and embrace each other, stroking over bare skin. All of them wear masks, and she becomes aware of the scratch of her own on her cheekbones. 

This is not for the amusement of men. No, this is for their own pleasure. Their own wants and desires. All shapes and sizes of women, all creeds and colours. 

Entranced, she watches them court each other. A woman wearing a black and white mask offers a strawberry to another wearing emerald, guiding it to her lips. The juice spills down her chin and throat, and black-and-white-mask leans in without prompting to catch the droplet on her tongue. 

Alex looks away, and sees a nude woman with heavy scarring across her shoulder blades. A pair in matching outfits and masks stroke and kiss along the silvery arcs. Beside them, a woman in a suit leans against a polished table, swirling amber liquid in a tumbler. Her attention is fixed on a woman dancing for her.  

One woman has another pressed to the wall. Her full face mask reveals no mouth, and yet she leans in as if to whisper a secret to her companion. Then, she dips their hand between her companion’s thighs- 

And she wakes with a start. Embarrassed at the tightness of her throat, she gulps down the stale water on her nightstand, and then lays back. 

Dreaming about women? It makes sense. She’s never had a friend who was a lesbian before. Maybe thinking about working the Roulette case alongside Maggie had dredged up the reaction she had had watching her kiss her girlfriend. She isn’t homophobic. 

Is she?

~

Time is a powerful thing. It can alter the context of conversations, of interactions, of entire friendships. 

She has the dream a second time. But this time, she goes to bed with Maggie’s voice swimming around her. 

_ You’d be surprised how many gay women I’ve heard that from. _

She has the dream again, but this time, she’s not clumsily stumbling across the scene. She’s not blind or baffled, she seeks it out. Like a hunter, she prowls through the dark corridors of the house towards the gasps and sighs of pleasure filtering into the air.  

The mansion is slightly altered, the corridor extending past the two animal statues. She stalks past them, and reaches a wide stone arch with heavy, black curtains framing either side. The room is long, with twin fireplaces, and the fire makes the shadows dance as flesh gyrates. 

She lingers, just at the edge of the curtain, watching the masked figures enthralled in their activities. This time, the kissing and petting has progressed to sex. On the plush couches, against the wall, across leather armchairs, dozens of women have each other, and be had in return. 

She has the dream again, but this time, she can see a lot more. This time, her curiosity takes over and she lets herself take the details in without shying away. She watches how a woman in a jester cap uses her mouth to draw gasps from one wearing an always-grinning theatre mask, the bells jangling as she works. Or how someone twirls her tongue around the nipple of a woman in a serpent’s mask, the yellow rims of the eyes menacing in the firelight.    

From the chaos emerges a woman in a black dress and silver mask. Her stride towards Alex is measured and slow. Her hips swing and with a tip of her head, she comes to a stop just in front of her. Her body language doesn’t read as aggressive, and Alex doesn’t retreat. They regard each other for a moment.  

The woman reaches up for Alex’s mask and the dream ends.  

As the sounds and sights of feminine pleasure recede from her waking mind, Alex thumps at the pillow. Maggie is wrong about her. She’s not like those women. She’s not…

She’s not like that. 

~

She has the dream a third time, but this time, she isn’t an observer. She’s a participant. 

The woman from before, the one in the black dress, bangs a huge brass knocker on a maghony entrance. Granted entry, they enter the mansion together. No one is wearing any shoes, and the crimson carpet is velvety under Alex’s bare feet. The animals have been swapped out for a bronze statue of two women entwined in an embrace, and Alex marvels at it as her companion leads her through the corridor.  

Led through the rooms, she gives a nod to those who catch her eye, and receives nods in return. She follows the woman in the black dress and they weave through bodies that thrust, that jerk, that arch up in pleasure. 

The woman takes her into a side room. The light of the main room’s chandeliers slant into the dark annex, and Alex sees a plush couch, but not much else. Neither of them move to close the door, shifting towards the couch.  

She thinks to ask, but she doesn’t need to. In fact, she doesn’t want to. She can hear the moans of women in the main room just through the open doorway, and she knows the intentions in that intense dark stare. It’s the haziness, the hypnotism, and it’s something else flooding heat into her veins, but she sits on the plush couch without being asked, or asking in return. 

And for her obedience, she is rewarded with her companion sinking to their knees. 

Truth be told, she isn’t sure who is in control. The woman in black is on her knees, but it is Alex who is vulnerable and pliant as her thighs are gently encouraged to part. 

Anxiety seizes her for a moment, and she leans forward to caress the woman’s cheek. Warm, soft skin. And lips, she wants to taste - and does. So unlike kissing a man. This woman doesn’t seek to dominate, or force her tongue into Alex’s mouth. She gives and takes, softly. And as Alex smooths her thumb along the woman’s angled jaw, just brushing the lace of her silver mask, she marvels at the lack of rough facial hair or hard edges. 

The woman pulls away, head tipping in a silent question. Feeling the scratch of her own mask, Alex nods and leans back again. The woman smiles, hands warm and gentle as they stroke at the outside of her thighs. She threads her hands into the woman’s hair as she dips her head down.  

She doesn’t have to take off the woman’s silver mask to recognise those brown eyes peering up at her, or to know whose hair is twisted like spun silk between her fingers. She doesn’t have to ask a question, or even utter a word to know whose lips drift up her inner thigh, whose hands flirt her dress hem higher around her thighs and hips. 

She just lets her head drop back at the first touch of Maggie Sawyer’s tongue against her through her underwear-

And wakes up. 

While Alex rarely dreams, familiar faces feature when she does. Kara, her mother, her father. Mrs Jenner, her third grade teacher. Couch Kimball, who coached the Midvale Stallions. Amy Allen who worked in the corner store - the first person Kara had taken a dislike to on Earth.

Often, the dream lingers like a cloud around them when she calls them to mind, but eventually dissipates. But this is different. The charged sexuality of the dream hangs in her dark apartment, drawn out in the shadows on the wall. 

Why would she have dreamt about Maggie this way?

Why was her stomach twisting into knots at those dark eyes and that glittering mask burning into her mind?

Of course lesbian women go down on each other. She’s heard enough slurs and jokes in her life. Had even heard a few locker room jokes between agents. Men have tried going down on her before. She never saw the appeal; the few that tried had been sloppy, and had never made her feel anything except uncomfortable. 

She remembers once, lying in someone’s bed, wondering why she couldn’t get wet for him. He’d offered to go down on her, and when his attempts were fruitless, she blew him until he finished and rolled over to sleep. Afterwards, listening to his snores and tasting him on her tongue, she felt the cool wetness of his saliva drying between her thighs and felt revulsion at the idea that anyone enjoyed receiving that act.  

But Maggie, well, of course she goes down on her girlfriend. On women. Because she’s...gay. That’s what she does in bed. Women going down on each other must have more finesse than those men, right?

Again, electricity zips through her stomach, and then drops further still into a throb of arousal. 

Maybe her period is due. Her sex drive usually spikes before menstruation.  _ Progesterone _ , she reminds herself. She had a vibrator hidden in the back of her drawer for this very occasion. 

But picturing this act is drawing out something that it hasn’t before. She closes her eyes and recalls the men who tried, before, and the throb dies out. Then, she brings the dream back to the forefront, and the throbbing returns. 

Ashamed, she opens her eyes and stares up at the ceiling. She had never imagined herself doing that to a woman, or receiving that from a woman, let alone a friend. How different would it be? Had she ever even kissed a girl before? Once, she remembers, at a high school party where they played truth or dare.

No, twice. College this time. A girl with strands of blue and green in her hair. No one had dared her then. She can’t remember what happened after...

And...a third time. A dancefloor, kissing a girl because she had been offered something a little stronger than alcohol and she wanted to get the men going. Hadn’t she? Wasn’t that why she had accepted the girl pulling her in by the back of the neck?

Her heart pounds in her chest, pieces of memory being revealed to her like dusty trinkets long forgotten and pulled from a high shelf. It is like rifling through possessions after a funeral, and while she might realise that is a morbid thought, it feels true. A part of her was dying, or perhaps had been long dead. The part that had longed to achieve orgasm with an encounter, rather than at her own hand. If one man she went to bed with could make her come, then she wouldn’t have felt so broken all of these years, wouldn’t have felt that she wasn’t built for intimacy like everyone else.   

But a new part of her rises like a long-awaited phoenix from the ashes; pulsing and bright and alive. 

Why had she never wondered before?

She presses the heels of her palms into her eyes until bright sparks appear. Could Maggie be right after all? Could this have been a huge blindspot?

Why had she never considered the idea that if she didn’t react physically- sexually- to men, then it might be because she was concentrating on the wrong gender. 

“Jesus,” she groans, “It’s not that easy. It can’t be that...I can’t be…like that.”

The age she should have been experimenting with her body, she shared a room with her sister. The boys she dated pawed at her, and she was chagrined to find that didn’t change as she grew out of adolescence. She had tolerated their touches, their grunts, their quick finishes. Nothing ever made her feel gratified, or good. These unfulfilling encounters made her feel more like sand unearthed and replaced in the wrong spot. 

Even her first orgasm had almost been by accident. Getting her own room when she moved out, she languished in the freedom to experiment. She used her hands, at first, and tried everything she could think of; she watched a range of pornography, searched endlessly at kinks and fetishes online in case there was some taboo she was missing. Eventually she bought herself a compact vibrator, hoping a change in stimulation would bring a change in results, but was disappointed when it didn’t. 

Frustrated at the lack of any change, she’d once held the vibrator between her legs and scrolled through a webpage of overly-fantasised erotica. While she can’t recall exactly what the story was about, she remembers that after a while it had been sort of pleasant. And then suddenly she had read a sentence which caused a stabbing throb to run through her centre. With continuance, and adjustment of the toy, she read the story over and over. Her body temperature rose, breathing stunted in her chest, and then her eyes fluttered shut and a pressure burst into a thousand lightning bolts through her hips. They raced up her legs and down her back, and with her hips jerking against the vibrator, she gasped through her first climax.  

At the time, it had felt like a victory. Finally.  _ Finally _ . 

Masturbation was an outlet. But it was also an assurance. It was possible for her to climax, to feel pleasure sparking at each of her nerves in that way that the songs and movies and novels told her it could. But never did she feel that it was an itch to scratch.  

And now, for some reason, she finds she needs it. 

Alex spins onto her stomach and pushes her face into the pillow. Disgust rolls through her at the idea of getting herself off while thinking about Maggie, because the detective was her friend- and friends don’t think about friends like that. 

And yet she is the first person in Alex’s memory who has triggered a sexual response. Thinking about men had never turned her on. And now...

Chewing her bottom lip, she slides her hand down, pausing as her fingertips brush the waistband of her underwear. Trying to clear away the feeling that this was wrong, she pushes further. 

“Oh, what-” she mumbles, frowning in surprise at her arousal. 

But what is the harm in coming before she sleeps?

When she gets herself off, she doesn’t see the sense in teasing. She touches exactly the right spots she knows will get her to the edge fastest. She curls her free hand under the pillow and, after a last hesitating objection, she goes back to her dream. 

She had felt the smooth, confident grip of Maggie’s hand in hers when they infiltrated the fight club, and a half dozen times other than that. They had brushed when she untied Maggie’s wrists from where Scorcher had strung her up. Their fingertips had touched at they exchanged paperwork, or knuckles brushing as they walked side by side. 

She imagines what those confident hands would feel like on the inside of her knees, spreading her legs apart. Would they curl underneath and lift Alex’s legs onto her shoulders? Is that how she liked to position her lovers when she tasted them?

A tremble rumbles through Alex’s stomach and almost unconsciously her fingers speed up. Her knees dig into the mattress as she spreads her legs wider, other hand fisting in the edge of the pillow. 

Would Maggie use her hands? Men had used their fingers to probe before, too rough and uncaring of whether she actually drew pleasure from it or not. And even she finds the stretch a bit much when she touches herself. But Maggie, well, the thought of taking any part of her inside…

And her mouth; would her movements be fluid and languid? Or would she seek to bleed the pleasure out quick, hot and intense? Would she draw sounds from Alex’s chest that no lover had before? Would she make noises herself? 

Alex ruts her hips forward into her own hand, feeling that telltale shake enveloping each limb. Her heart beats in her throat, head spinning as she presses her face into the cotton pillow. She could feel the phantom vibrations of Maggie’s groan against her, the wet heat of her mouth, the woman’s eyes closing in her own pleasure. 

Her cries are muffled by the pillow as that dam bursts and she comes, her hips thrusting hard into her palm. The waves are strong, her entire body seizing as the electricity snaps and spreads up her spine to her spinning mind. 

Eventually, her mind still adrift, she falls forward against the sheets. The humidity is unbearable, and she throws off the covers, sweat slicking over her body. Desperately trying to catch her breath, she flops onto her back. Her heart still racing, she swipes at her hairline, hot with exertion. Her other hand slides out of her underwear, wet fingertips trailing over her stomach where her tank top has ridden up. 

In the post-orgasm daze, her reactions are split. On one hand, she feels another sense of that victory. Another thing to check off her list. She has finally brought herself to orgasm thinking about a human being that she is attracted to, rather than the fanatical smut she reads in the darker corners of the internet. 

On the other hand, that human being is a woman. That human being is Maggie Sawyer, friend and colleague, who called her out on her latent homosexuality before she realised she even swung that way. 

Alex’s legs twitch as aftershocks nip at her nerves. She isn’t getting back to sleep tonight, and perhaps that is for the best. 

She didn’t want to run the risk of having that dream again. 

**Author's Note:**

> Always wondered why Alex suddenly realised she might enjoy intimacy with a woman. Here's one interpretation.


End file.
